How to ensure you achieve your goals

Goal setting is an important tool for anybody who wants to improve
themselves. However, goal achieving is often a neglected part of the personal
development process. Plenty of people set goals (just look at New Year's Eve),
but few of these goals ever come to fruition. Why is that?

Why goals fail

Let's face it, we're often full of enthusiasm when we're dreaming about what we
want to achieve, but gradually the feeling fades and we're left back at the
start - dreaming.

Goals fail because not enough thought and effort goes into achieving
them. Setting the goal is only part of the journey, you must put in a conscious
and consistent effort into burning the goal into your mind.

Thankfully, there's plenty you can do to improve your chances of turning your
dreams into reality.

Set excellent goals

Many factors go into creating an effective goal, and it's something I'll be
writing about in more depth in the future. Here are a few key points:

Be specific - The more specific the goal, the better. "Exercise more" is
not specific, but "Exercise every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning
before work for twenty minutes" is much better. Doesn't that sound less like
a dream and more like a plan?

Set a date - As plenty of people have said, "a goal without a deadline is
just a dream". Giving yourself a reasonable deadline can help stop the "I'll
start it tomorrow" syndrome that can creep up on you. A deadline promotes
action, and helps you prioritise your tasks. Would your boss ever give you a
big project to be completed "whenever"? Didn't think so.

Commit to paper - It sounds simple, but it's a step some people can
miss. Write your goals down. This not acts as a form of commitment, but it
stops you from forgetting them too!

Plan how you'll achieve them

Once you've got your goals, you need to plan how you'll achieve them. This
process is really down to personal preference, but a good start is to write down
the first concrete action you can take toward achieving your goal. If you like
to think further ahead, you can write down the next three steps, or a more
detailed plan for anything complex. It's really a case of finding out what works
best for you. Don't be afraid to experiment with different methods until you
find something that works.

Mind-mapping can be a great help at the planning stage, and it's often
beneficial to write down as many ideas as you can at this stage. Always go for
quantity, and never throw out an idea when you're mind mapping. The important
part is to create a safe environment for your creativity, so you don't want to
stifle it by throwing out ideas at an early stage. Some ideas that sound bad may
even turn out to be useful once you've had time to think about them. Once you've
got all your ideas, you can start to review them and put them into a coherent
plan.

As an example, if I had a goal of increasing traffic to my blog I'd want to get
as many ideas as possible, and then create an easy to follow plan in small steps
that I could complete every day. This might include posting on certain days,
contributing to relevant forums on a daily basis etc.

If you're stuck at this part, don't worry. Solutions have a habit of appearing
when you're least expecting them, so as long as you're constantly reviewing your
goal (as covered in the next section), you'll do fine. Just make sure you have
some paper handy for when the answer arrives!

Review your goals regularly!

Once your goals are committed to paper and planned out, you need to make sure
you review them on a regular basis. Reading and re-writing your goals helps to
galvanise them, and creates the drive and momentum that will push you to
achieving them. Read your goals every morning and every night, and review them
every week.

Do what works for you. Write your goals on an index card and carry them around,
record them to a tape and play it whilst driving to work, write them on a huge
poster and stick it to the ceiling above your bed! The important thing is to
really hammer them into your brain. Goals that get forgotten don't get achieved,
so make sure you're regularly topping yourself up.

Don't be afraid to tweak things if they're not going as well as you'd
like. Modify plans as regularly as you need to, because even if things are going
well, you will almost certainly learn new things that will help you achieve your
goals even faster.

The important stuff

To summarise - if you want to achieve your goals, use the following methods:

Set Excellent Goals - Write down your goals, and make them as specific as
possible. Give yourself a deadline to help you prioritise your actions.

Plan how you'll achieve them - Once you've written your goals down, make a
plan as to how you'll achieve them.

@Paulo: I watched "The Secret" a few weeks ago, and although it wasn't
as profound an experience as I'd expected, I learnt some useful ideas
from it. I'll probably watch it again before writing about it in detail,
and I have a feeling the second viewing will be more beneficial.

About establishing goals, I read some time ago (don't recall exactly
where or written by whom) that if you wanted to make God laugh, you just
need to share your goals. In Mexico, we have a saying: "when a person is
proposed to do something, the devil always comes and gets in the way"
(or something like this, since a whole lot of the meaning is lost in the
translation of popular sayings, but I think you get the feel of it).

Well, this comment went from God to the devil, but it's meant in a
healthy way. I'm myself a personal-development trainer, so I convinced
on the need to establish, follow and surpass goals!